Southwest Fresno road gets first major upgrade in 30 years
Southwest Fresno’s MLK Boulevard is finally getting bike lanes and a left-turn lane, ending a 30-year wait on the one-mile stretch from Jensen to North.
Crews began repaving a one-mile stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in southwest Fresno on Monday, bringing the road its first major upgrade in more than 30 years. The work runs from Jensen Avenue to North Avenue and is scheduled to continue through mid-August, with new bike lanes and a left-turn lane added to the corridor.
For neighbors along the route, the project has the feel of something long delayed. Wilbur Clark, senior pastor of Ebenezer Community Church of God in Christ, called it a “sigh of relief” and said it should help residents have more confidence that city leaders are getting things done.
The job is being paid for with $1 million in Measure C money, but it also sits inside a much larger city push in southwest Fresno. The City of Fresno lists the MLK Active Transportation Project at $9,117,600, covering Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between Jensen Avenue, Walnut Avenue and Church Avenue. That wider effort is funded through a federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant, Measure C bike and trail funds, and local Senate Bill 1 Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account funds.
City officials have framed those projects as part of a broader shift in a part of Fresno that has long lacked basic walking and biking infrastructure. The city’s 2024 Active Transportation Plan updates the 2017 plan and emphasizes accessibility, safety and connectivity for walking, biking, wheelchair use and other human-powered travel.
The MLK work also fits into a cluster of related projects already underway in southwest Fresno. In March 2025, the city broke ground on the Southwest Fresno Trail, also called the Rashad Al-Hakim Jr. Trail, along the Fanning Ditch alignment between West Avenue and Thorne Avenue. That trail is part of the city’s Transformative Climate Communities projects and adds another pedestrian and cycling link in the same neighborhood.
Taken together, the projects mark one of the clearest signs yet that southwest Fresno is getting more than a patch-and-pave job on a single street. The new lane striping, turn lane and trail work point to a longer-term effort to make it easier to move through the neighborhood by car, bike or on foot, after decades in which residents waited for basic road improvements to catch up.
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